Bibliographies and online documents of individual Burma/Myanmar scholars
Scholars who would like their bibliographies displayed in this section of the Library are welcome to email them to the Librarian at darnott@iprolink.ch

"...Since the first edition of this work was released in July 2012, there has been an increased flow of new, revised and
reprinted publications about Burma. A survey of publishers’ catalogues and booksellers’ websites suggests that this
trend is set to continue for some time. This activity reflects a high level of interest in the country, not only in official
and academic circles, but also among the wider public. This interest is likely to be maintained in 2015, when Burma’s
hybrid civilian-military government is due to hold national elections and, in early 2016, to choose a new president.
The outcome of these competitions will be critical to the future of President Thein Sein’s ambitious reform program,
launched in 2011, and to Burma’s relations with the wider world.
As this edition of the bibliography helps to demonstrate, most of the public (and scholarly) interest in Burma over the
past few years has been related to the country’s politics and economy, accounting for the large number of new
works in those categories. This has included several important edited works, with chapters provided by a range of
noted Burma watchers, covering such issues as the continuing political role of the armed forces, unresolved tensions
with the ethnic minorities, the obstacles to further economic development and the growth of civil society. Also, the
increased number of postgraduates working on Burma in Western and other countries has led to specialised studies
on areas and issues that, until now, had rarely been subject to close examination..."

List of published books and links to more than 20 online documents, mostly on the Mon, the Karen and internal displacement in Burma/Myanmar ....."Ashley South is an independent writer and consultant, specialising in humanitarian and political issues in Burma/Myanmar and Southeast Asia."

"There was a time when the small community of professional Burma-watchers in the West could claim with some confidence that they were conversant with most, if not all, the academic and non-scholarly literature about the country. That situation has changed and it is now very difficult, if not impossible, to keep fully abreast of the outpouring of publications devoted to Burma (or Myanmar, as it is now called).
There are a number of reasons for this.
After the Second World War, Burma was largely forgotten by the West. Except for events like Burma’s independence from Britain in 1948 and Ne Win’s military coup in 1962, it was rarely reported in the popular press. It featured in a few Hollywood movies, but they tended to hark back to the war. Even when the threat of communist ‘subversion’ in Southeast Asia began to attract global attention, Burma’s problems were not considered as important as those of states like Vietnam. It was not until the 1980s that the work of pioneering journalists like Bertil Lintner, writing in the old Far Eastern Economic Review, encouraged observers to look more closely at the country..."

"... These days, Burma’s transition from tyranny to democracy is partly stymied by the opposition’s attempt to institutionalize the memory of our past political divisions. Instead of putting forward a vision for the future and policies to make that vision a reality, the opposition leadership tends to employ a "good-versus-evil" political narrative as a key frame of reference in mobilizing the public. The opposition, of course, can gain a significant advantage by using this polarizing ploy. The public’s distrust and hatred of the previous junta still poisons its opinion of the current pseudo-civilian government. However, using history as a campaign instrument has only encouraged dark forces within the establishment to defend themselves using "biology" in campaigns advocating racial and religious purity. These have ranged from an attempt to prohibit interfaith marriage, to rampant anti-Muslim hate speeches, to outright communal violence. The country is gradually sliding into a history-versus-biology political battle as it approaches the 2015 elections. What we really need is a truly democratic contest of vision and policy. The country lacks a sense of unity. True reconciliation and healing remain elusive in this fragile transition.
Mandela was right. When invoking memory becomes a political strategy, society suffers from a lack of imagination. Without a new vision for the future, we cannot move on and be reborn..."